


Snooping Around

by MaddieandChimney



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:41:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24806377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaddieandChimney/pseuds/MaddieandChimney
Summary: Maddie knows Chimney would never cheat on her but it doesn't stop her from snooping around when he starts acting suspiciously.
Relationships: Maddie Buckley/Howie "Chimney" Han
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11
Collections: Madney One-Shots





	Snooping Around

Maddie knows deep down she’s being stupid. Chimney loves her, he tells her as much about a hundred times a day with this massive, goofy grin on his face as he does. It’s not at all logical that he’d cheat on her, it’s not even a little reasonable to be snooping through his apartment right then but she can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t right.

He keeps disappearing.

Okay, keeps, she supposes, is a bit of a stretch – he’s ‘stopped replying to her and not telling her where he is’ twice. But still, it’s not _like_ him to ignore her for any stretch of time, it’s not _like_ him to change the subject when she asks him where he’s been, it’s not _like_ him to make his excuses and practically run out of the apartment when she tried to press him.

So, she finds herself snooping around and she’s only slightly ashamed of herself.

Him cheating on her seems to be the only conclusion she can draw right then – whether reasonable or not. She can’t fathom any other reason why he would be acting the way he is, why he would… hide anything else from her when they were meant to tell each other everything. That was the promise they had made when they realised hiding any part of themselves from the other wasn’t going to work for them.

And because it’s the only _reasonable_ explanation, her hands are trembling and her bottom lip quivering as her eyes tear up when she finds a note with several dates and a phone number scribbled down. She’s been cheated on before, when she was a teenager and with Doug, it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that maybe she just wasn’t giving him what he needed. Maybe she was too broken, maybe he needed something more, everyone else had.

Maddie hates herself even as she does it, typing in the number on the paper as she takes a deep breath. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do, what she’s going to say but she has to at least hear the voice of the woman who’s destroying her life. She still hesitates before she presses the dial button but still, she presses down on it anyway.

Her heart almost stops when she hears an extremely friendly voice of what she can only assume is a bubbly blonde, speaking down the phone. It takes far too long to register in her mind exactly what the woman says, not able to break free of the thought that she really, really wasn’t good enough for Chimney, she had seen pictures of some of his exes, she was opposite in every single way possible.

Then she pauses, registering the actual words that the woman had spoken, “Sorry, wrong number.” She manages to rush out, setting her phone to the side as she takes a deep, trembling breath.

“Hey, I’m home and I come bearing Chinese!” Chimney’s happy voice echoes through the apartment and she realises she’s still there, holding the note he had tucked away safely, exposing the fact she had been sneaking around in the first place.

It was a therapist. Chimney was in therapy.

“What are you doing?” Shit.

She’s been caught, there’s definitely no escaping from that. He’s already seen the piece of paper in her hands and the startled look on her face. Her cheeks are flushed with a mixture of embarrassment and guilt as she opens her mouth to say something, and then quickly changes her mind. 

“What are you doing?” He repeats, and he doesn’t sound angry, more… scared but it doesn’t stop her from stepping back. Not because she’s scared of him, but because she’s worried that he’s going to hate her for not trusting him in the first place. That was the entire basis of their relationship - the fact they completely and utterly trusted each other in every single way possible. 

She couldn’t help but feel as though she had let him down. 

“Why didn’t you just tell me you were in therapy?” The words are out before she can stop them, despite the fact she had planned on apologising a thousand times over before ever admitting any wrong-doing. 

Maddie has known him long enough to recognise that look on his face, the way he looks as though he’s about to throw up at any given opportunity, which means… 

She closes the gap between them and grabs his arm just in time before he can make a beeline to his bathroom. To the only door that locks in the entire apartment. “D-don’t run away from me, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Please, please don’t run away from me.” 

“I wasn’t–” There’s a sheepish look on his face, trailing off because he knew damn well what he had been planning on doing. 

“You could have told me, you know I go see Frank at least once a week. I don’t understand why you’d be ashamed?” 

“I’m not ashamed, Maddie, I’m just—apprehensive. Therapy is hard, I never–I never stick to it. I didn’t want you to say you were proud of me and then me let you down.” She’s relieved, at least, to know that he’s not keeping it from her because he’s embarrassed. It doesn’t help to know he’s keeping it from her because he worries about letting her down, though. 

“Okay… I won’t say I’m proud, then.” She shrugs, hoping it can be dropped, mostly in the hope she doesn’t have to explain exactly why she was searching through his drawers in the first place. “I’ll just say… I hope it helps you as much as it does me and if it doesn’t… then that’s okay, too. Will you please eat some food with me? We don’t have to talk, I promise.” 

The relief when he nods his head only lasts a minute, before he frowns, “How did you even find that?” 


End file.
